It was bad enough that the Kennedy family had refused to release what were described as the private papers of the late Robert Kennedy. But then, last August, Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender revealed that many of the papers were actually official documents from RFK's time as attorney general, including some that may have pertained to assassination attempts against Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Yet the papers have still not been released. And thus RFK's son Max Kennedy, who has acted as the family's spokesman, earns his second Muzzle for stonewalling on the RFK papers (the first came in 2011).

According to an index obtained by Bender, the 62 boxes of files may contain crucial insights into such matters as the Kennedy administration's anti-Castro activities, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Vietnam War. Max Kennedy said the family hoped to release all the papers. But one of the hold-ups, according to the Globe, was the family's desire to get a tax deduction for the papers before turning them over to the public domain.

As a Globe editorial put it, the Kennedy family "never should have been granted control over official documents in the first place. And they certainly shouldn't feel entitled to a tax deduction for them."

The 13th Annual Muzzle Awards A year and a half into the Age of Obama, we are learning a lesson we should have figured out long ago — that repression, once in place, is rarely rolled back all the way, and that liberals no less than conservatives are reluctant to give up power.

A libertarian's view of the Barstool/Brady child-porn fiasco Sophisticated First Amendment scholars, lawyers, and media commentators, all of whom are strongly free-speech/free-press supporters, were critical of Coakley for allegedly engaging in a legal bluff — the veiled threat of possible prosecution under the state's child-porn statute — to convince Portnoy to remove the offending and exploitative image from his site.

The 12th Annual Muzzle Awards With the era of repression and secrecy fostered by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney finally over, this should be the best of times for freedom of expression, open government, and civil liberties. Yet change comes slowly.

News worth paying for? The Providence Journal , offering a rare window onto its own affairs, recently reported that the newspaper could start charging for access to large swaths of projo.com as early as the first quarter of next year.